Mark Bel, Teacher

by Dawn Lyons

I caught up with Mark Bell in the very large parlour of St. John’s Presbyterian Church on Broadview Avenue. It was 9:00 on Monday night, after a rehearsal

Mark motions us to sit at one end of a rough circle of mis-matched comfy chairs, like an overstuffed Stonehenge. A music educator for 17 years, Mark currently teaches music at Withrow Public School, in the new Toronto District School Board. He is also the president of the Toronto Public Schools’ Music Teachers’ Association. And BA (Before Amalgamation) his title was Curriculum Advisor, Music for the old Toronto Board of Education.

Me: School board amalgamation. Budget cuts. Doom and gloom. What’s really happening to music in the schools?

Mark: Oh, lots. Where to start? Last year, for instance, with amalgamation, we had 10.5 music advisor positions, plus co-ordinator Paul Martin. This year there are four, they call them "instructional leaders for music" now, but it’s the same job.

Me: Which is?

Mark: Helping music teachers and classroom teachers who are not musicians to deliver the music curriculum -- a lot of classroom teachers don’t read or write music.  We would go in and help the teacher. Say a choir preparing for Kiwanis, I could give them another pair of ears, I could say, "You should work on blend," or whatever.

Where we were coming from, under Bob Rae and the NDP, music and the arts were actually on a par with the other subjects. Now with Mike Harris there is a curriculum for "The Arts", and it covers visual arts, music, drama AND dance.

Me: Which does what to music?

Mark: Well, under the Harris plan, only one arts credit is required during the four years...

Me: Only one?

Mark: Only one. Grade 9 Music is  open,  so kids who have never taken a note of music are in the same  class as kids who have had years of music. And the curriculum   in terms of music notation, for instance, for the Grade 1 s they have watered it right down. They call it `rigorous , but they don t introduce quarter notes until Grade 4. And then by Grade 8 students are expected to write an original musical. How s that going to happen?

Me: So what should it be like?

Mark: Well, if kids should have read Romeo and Juliet by grade 12, they should also know Beethoven Six, also who is Picasso, what a Rembrandt looks like.  They should have heard certain music, just as they know who Michael Jordan is. We have to make these things part of the school experience, I think we as a society are not educating our young people if we re not.

Me: So, is amalgamation going to hurt or help?

Mark: I m really afraid for our old board s programs. We were doing some amazing stuff. Music at the Boyne, for example ...

Me: At the what?

Mark clarifies: Boyne River Natural Science School, near Shelburne. City kids could go there to learn about nature. It s a residential school, with dorms, kids would stay there, it was part of the Toronto School Board; Scarborough and East York had similar programs. Instrumental music, strings and band -- would go for 8 days in June. There was a fee -- $210 for a week, that included the bus there and back, 3 square meals a day and snacks, teachers and programs. But a lot of kids got bursaries too. The program is still in effect, and the choral version, Voices at the Boyne, still seems OK, at least for this year...And we take high school students as tutors. I have seen kids at Boyne in grade school, then I see them come back as aides in high school, now they are teaching in the schools. This is an amazing tradition, an amazing mentorship, and quite a familial feeling. I work with these kids all over the city, then I see them at Roy Thomson in a massed choir of 600voices in an all-city choir, or an all-city orchestra, or an all-city string ensemble... And we don t know what will happen to Boyne.

Me: And aside from Boyne?

Mark: I was at an all-city Recorder Fest last May at Rosedale Heights Secondary School, the program said there were 450 public school kids there from all over the city.  It was amazing, each school played a few pieces from the stage but the really great part was when these kids who d never seen each other before all played together, just from their seats in the auditorium. It was like being inside an organ! And that was the last one there will be, so far as we know.

(He is quiet for a moment before continuing.)

Another thing. The Toronto public schools have presented their annual concert every spring for 115 years, at Roy Thomson Hall, at Massey Hall before that, and somewhere else before that. The Grade 4 s have their recorder group, the Orff group puts on a dance, and the steel pans play in the actual concert now   they used to be in the foyer, now they re part of the concert. I had a hand in that, I did a lot of the ground work forgetting world music into the curriculum. The secondary schools have been at Massey Hall every April for 42years.

Me: On the phone you mentioned the public schools  traveling music teachers -- and cutbacks there. How does the travelling teacher thing work?

Mark: Well, Grades 4 and up get Isabelle Wolman or one of the other itinerant recorder teachers for one half hour a week, the Orff teachers for Grades 1 - 3.   The regular teacher stays in the classroom during the music lesson so it s professional development as well.  If the regular teacher is committed, she will see that the kids practice for 10 or 20 minutes every day, or every other day, so when the traveling teacher gets back with the kids there s some progress. Starting in Grade 5 we offer strings or band -- junior band for Grades5 and 6, senior band for 7 and 8.  Now the way things are shaping up, when they go off to high school, they re going to get strings or band or choir or orchestra -- or maybe not.

Mark sighs: But I m not really doing that anymore, last year my job was help figure out how all this new curriculum and amalgamation was going to work. This year ... I m back in a school.

Me: How do you feel about that?

Mark doesn’t have to hesitate:  Happy as hell, happy to be back with kids. Last year I wore my car out, I was putting 90km a day on it -- at old Toronto Board mileage allowances -- meeting in Scarborough, meeting in Etobicoke, meeting downtown... now I can walk to work in 12 minutes. (He gets enthusiastic.) This year the choir is going to be a mixed choir   last year there were only two boys – we’ve agreed that Tuesday will be choir day, we’ve arranged with the Phys Ed teacher that there are no conflicting PE activities on Tuesday. I think that being a man myself helps give the boys a different view of music.

Me: What are you going to miss?

Mark looks agonized: I can t imagine how they are going to put on the spring concert in Roy Thomson Hall. Last year Shelagh Cohen and I worked full-tilt on it, the workload was designed for six people, now it s just Shelagh, plus she has 22 East York schools to do. I guess my main criticism of the Harris plan is that there is no vision for what music is going to be in the schools. The TSB is operating on a mitigation fund that will run out in three years. Paul Marshall, the co-ordinator, they trimmed his budget by $200K, then 90K, it s been whittled away... .  A lot of our experienced teachers have been retired, they’ve taken a package. Paul Marshall retires in December. There s a world of experience, the knowledge this man has in his head, and he s going to be gone!  The Choral Festival, just as an example -- that s days and days of auditions and deciding what pieces we can do -- all this history and tradition that needs to get passed on. Paul taught me, I learned from him, and last spring I packed up my office and its all in storage.  That stuff should be in teachers  hands, so they can teach. Our choral library is at Western Tech, that’s a tremendous resource, our holdings are mainly in SA, of course, but we’ve also got SAT and SATB. And I have the key here in my pocket! I have teachers calling me,  How can I get into the choral library? ,and I have the key in my pocket, and I have to tell them I don t know, no one has picked up the ball. Anyway, I m in my own school now and what I have to offer is making a difference in 565 lives.

Me: Can you pinpoint what s gone wrong with the system?

Mark: We’re all one school board now, and the challenge is how are we going to give the same services to everyone. Are THEY going to have the same programs WE had? Is everyone going to have band at Grade 5, recorder at Grade 4, Orff in kindergarten?  (He shrugs). We’ve just been told that the budget for piano accompanists for school choirs has been cut. This has HUGE (Mark opens his eyes wide and makes big circles with his hands) implications for our program. Now we’re being told that individual schools will have to fund it themselves. If their PTA is not really up to it, we don’t have a choir, or the director has to try to direct AND accompany. (He looks at me in frustration.) This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Me: What else?

Mark grimaces and spreads his hands: There is no longer a Central Budget for repairing musical instruments, there is now a "Special Programs Fund" that principals can access.

Me: That doesn’t sound too sinister.

Mark explains: The same fund is for computers, sports equipment, trips. There is a lot of competition for that money from other programs. What happens when the sax needs new pads, or the cello needs new strings? And what does a principal know about instrument repairs, anyway? They phone and ask, "Where do I get a cello repaired?" They never needed to know that before, it was all handled centrally.

Me: Sounds like they’re out of their depth.

Mark: I worry about the principals, actually. They don’t have central anymore, if the roof leaks, it’s their problem to get it fixed.  They’re plant managers now, they are no longer in control of the school. For example, for the steel pan festival, the Board trucks used to go to the schools and pick up the pans to go to Roy Thompson Hall.  This year some of them were dropped and they may look like steel drums but they’re tuned and they got knocked out of tune and it cost $500 out of the school’s budget to get them fixed.

In the old days we had an orientation for the board drivers, we’d go to central and we’d tell them, "This is a cello, this is how you pack it, this is where the bungee cords go..."  There’s just so many things that aren’t working, like the car allowances which are still based on the former Toronto Board driving distances."

Me: So, on the bright side, what are we doing here at 10 o’clock at night at St. John’s Presbyterian Church?

Mark grins: Oh, that’s my choir, the Riverdale Youth Singers.  We’re here because St. John’s gives us free space, we give free concerts.  Come and see our office.

(He leads me down and around -- the church is huge.)

Me, wondering if I have any breadcrumbs: This is a big place!

Mark: You should see some of the other areas they haven’t used for years, they’ve just closed them off, they don’t heat them.  Here we are, I share it with the caretaker.  Look, here’s our music -- that’s $150 worth of music for each chorister, and here’s a photo of our concert last year, and here’s our program, and here’s our handbook.

I marvel at the neatly bound pamphlets, thinking what a lot of work they represent.  I scan the program -- there are 18 pieces representing the provinces; composers include Robertson, Lavalee, Walden, Dubinsky, Guthrie, Telfer. Beside each piece of music on the program, a work of art is also listed -- I see Varley, Walker, Carmichael, Moshe Safdie, Lucius and John O’Brien, Beattie, A Y Jackson, Tom Thompson.

Me: What’s that about?

Mark: We showed slides of Canadian art that was appropriate for each song.

The program lists the schools that choristers attend. I count 24 schools.

Me: What’s this here on the program? "Relatives and friends singing with the RYS"?

Mark (smiles): A lot of the adults who were dropping the kids off and picking them up said, yeah it’s great for the kids, but we’d like to sing, we just can’t commit more time!  So I told them, well, you’re already here to pick them up, so we set aside the last 45 minutes of rehearsal for them and they sing with the kids in the concert.

Me: Speaking of not having more time, what’s your day like?  You said you were starting at 6:30 this morning, when we set this interview up.

Mark laughs: Yes, and at 20 to 1 this morning I was sending my last e-mail to (choral colleague) Ann Cooper Gaye. Yeah, it’s a long day. With the choir’s alto section and soprano section rehearsals, that’s extended my week by 7 hours that I don’t get paid for, but that’s my love.

Me: Aren’t teachers now required to do additional hours after school? I read a letter from a teacher at Parry Sound HS who was giving notification that he was no longer doing after-school activities. He said in his letter that he was offended at being forced to do what he had been doing voluntarily for 12 years -- the school plays and school musicals and school concerts and all the extra rehearsals that these involved, on his own time. Do you have that problem?

Mark looks troubled, then finds a smile: Now that’s one that’s not actually my problem. I’m not in a secondary school.